In Loving Memory of Vanesa Campos (a.k.a.: Vanessa Campos)

Born April 16, 1982 - Passed Away August 17, 2018

This memorial website was created in the memory of Vanesa Campos , born in Cayaltí, Cuzco on April 16, 1982 and passed away on August 17, 2018 at 36 years of age.

Vanesa Campos was a trans sex worker and an undocumented migrant from Peru living in Paris. She was 36 when she got killed at the Bois de Boulogne during the night of 16 to 17 August 2018. Her murder occurred after she resisted a group of men armed with a gun stolen from a police officer.

This crime took place in a context of rising insecurity in the Bois de Boulogne, a situation which is the result of a new law aimed at reinforcing the "fight against the prostitution system” by penalizing prostitutes’ clients, thus forcing sex workers to retreat deeper into the woods where they are safe from police intervention but left at the mercy of mafia gangs.

Ten suspects, nine Egyptians and a Syrian, including at least two minors, were arrested between August 2018 and January 2019 in France and Germany. The prosecutors seeks to charge nine men for the murder. On January 30, 2022, two of them were sentenced to 22 years' imprisonment for organised murder, and the others were sentenced to three to six years' imprisonment.